First Come First Serve vs. GM Picking Characters

[Crichton]

Hm, I don't know how much worth there is to my two cents here since I've been running the same RP series for the past six years.

First of all, teach me your ways.

(...) And when I say 'best', I mean the character I feel has the most creative potential, the player I feel is most open to collaboration and less likely to cause needless drama with other players, and a number of other things that will help things run smoothly along the way. So yeah, I expect you to fill out a character sheet the way I want it, but I'll also PM you about your character and run ideas by you to see how you react and how you may or not add to those ideas. I'm going to either like you or I won't, and that's going to play a part as well. I'm going to demand some effort from you, but I'm also going to put in an effort to work with you, and if that results in nothing, well, we tried. *shrug*

See, this is kind of what I'm trying to get at, though. I mean there is still an element of reservation in there, but I'd prefer for GMs to be more comfortable with working with characters they might not be immediately happy with. I'm much more for encouraging communication between GM and player without this strange boss-employee relationship implied by applications, which you seem to avoid at least to a small degree. Overall I don’t like the idea that we shouldn’t give chances to people who we don’t find “good enough”– but I wouldn't want anyone to play with someone they can't get along with.

I'd like to encourage people to give more chances, I guess is what I'm saying.

[Zodia195]

I am pretty much on the same page Crichton. Recently I joined a new RPG that did have roles that were first come first serve. However the GM had a few rules about reserving a role- 1st was the right to deny the player the role, 2nd was creating a time limit in creating a character profile. I am all for creating a time limit when it comes to these things because it is a way to see if a person is interested in joining the RPG. The time limit here is 72 hours and someone already has almost ran out of time.

Also I want to thank everyone for contributing to this topic. It's something that's been on my mind recently and it's great to get impute from different perspectives.

[Blackbird26]

First of all, teach me your ways.

Ha. If I ever figure out how I did it. ^^

I'd prefer for GMs to be more comfortable with working with characters they might not be immediately happy with.

I think that's a fine sentiment, but in the end of the day, I think the GM's role is to make whatever decisions they believe is best not only for the story but for the enjoyment of everyone involved. And in the end, there's no set way to do that. I've accepted players and characters into my RPs despite not feeling entirely confident in my decision (and not all of them were new or inexperienced players tbh) and it inevitably led to me having to jump through hoops to make them fit in because they weren't communicating with other players, disrupting the story for the sake of one person, and messing with not only my fun but other players'. And that led me to... Trust my instincts a bit more in future endeavors.

I'm much more for encouraging communication between GM and player without this strange boss-employee relationship implied by applications

I think the formality people associate with character applications is a fault on the people involved and not the application process. If you treat it like a job application, then that's what'll be.

Like I said, it's only fair for the GM to put in the effort to get to know the players and incorporate their characters into the story, but it's also not fair for the GM to be forced to hold someone's hand while they should also be running the RP for everyone else.

I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you that people should give new players chances, but realistically... You can't give them to literally everyone and also keep things on a somewhat even level.